Table of Contents

Frontmatter List of Illustrations 1: Introduction Between Athens and Jerusalem Weaving together histories and traditions Israeli theatre and its audiences A survey of scholarship Scope of the study Book structure 2: Habima: Outsidedness as a catalyst of creativity First encounters with the Greek Classical repertoire In lieu of summary: The Nissim Aloni effect 3: The Cameri: In search of local theatrical identity A Modern Hebrew theatre in Tel Aviv Summary 4: Experimentations: Putting the aesthetics of performance into practice Aryeh Sachs: Experimenting with ritual theatre Yossi Yizraely: Experimentations with stage imagery Edna Shavit: Experiments with Classicism Summary 5: Aristophanes and the Occupied Territories Text and socio-political context Hanoch Levin: Contention, defiance, and protest Summary 6: The Trojan War and Israeli-Palestinian conflict Theatrical responses to the Six Day War (1967) Theatrical responses to the Lebanon War (1981) Summary 7: Lysistrata: Between entertainment and protest Lysistrata on the Israeli stages Summary 8: Nissim Aloni: Oedipus Tyrannus in an immigrant society The myth of King Oedipus: Migrant and autochthon Summary 9: Hanoch Levin: From ancient myths to modern tragedy Israel in the aftermath of the Six Day War (1967) Levin's dialogue with Euripides Levin's dialogue with Aeschylus: The Moaners (1999) Summary 10: Classical presences and 'post dramatic' performances Ruth Kanner: Processing communal grief Troy revisited in the third millennium Ilan Ronen: Theatre as a memory machine Rina Yerushalmi: Lessons of the past Hanan Snir: From politics to psychodrama Summary 11: The Classical tradition in university theatre First encounters: Sophocles' Antigone (1969) From theory to practice: Yizraely reads Aristotle Research and practice: Greek tragedy In lieu of summary: The General and the Sea (2015) 12: Israeli theatre: A snapshot of today and future prospects Appendix: Performances of Greek and Roman drama in Israel Endmatter Bibliography Index

About the Author

Nurit Yaari is Professor of Theatre Studies in the Department of Theatre Arts within the David and Yolanda Katz Faculty of the Arts at Tel Aviv University. She previously held a Visiting Professorship at INALCO (Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales) in Paris. She has published widely in Hebrew, English, and French on contemporary French theatre, Israeli theatre, and on the reception of Greek tragedy in Israeli theatre and modern dance, including the monograph Le theatre de Hanokh Levin: Ensemble a l'ombre des canons (Editions Theatrales, 2008), and the edited collection Inter-Art Journey: Exploring the Common Grounds of the Arts. Studies in Honor of Eli Rozik (Sussex Academic, 2015). Professor Yaari is also currently serving as an artistic consultant for the Khan Theatre of Jerusalem.

Reviews

Yaari's book opens a window to Israeli theater for nonspecialists in this field, without any need for prior familiarity with the Hebrew language. It is also a valuable contribution to the widening field of classical reception, showing how this discipline can be a catalyst for invigorating examinations of the politics of cultural and religious identities ... Yaari's research is an invitation to further study how modern Israeli culture identifies itself both within and in contrast to the Mediterranean space, broadly construed, with its European and Arab components coexisting in close proximity. * Abigail Akavia, Classical Philology *
Yaari's monograph is not simply a significant addition for the field of Classical Reception, it is also a remarkable study in its effort to resolve the old tensions between 'Athens' and 'Jerusalem', those two ideological forces of influence in the Jewish national renaissance of modern times ... Yaari's book is a rich and well-written study, which presents Greek drama as a standing cultural apparatus for a post-Brechtian, post-humanist, and post-dramatic era, demonstrating that Israeli theatre treated 'Athens' as the cultural product of the Eros for democracy and transformation. * George Sampatakakis, New Theatre Quarterly *
This well written and well researched work is highly recommended for classists, for historians and sociologists of Israel, and for those interested in the classical tradition and its reception, cross-cultural dialogue, Greek drama in general, and Israeli theater in particular. Yaari has made a truly worthwhile contribution to the field, opening many new trails that warrant further exploration. * David B. Levy, Classical World *
Nurit Yaari's study of the 'clasical tradition' on Israeli stages, appropriately pulished in the Classical Presences series at Oxford University Press, is an exemplary study of a complex and multifaceted cultural encounter between the past and the present: the integration of the classical Greek and Roman legacies into the gradually emerging Israeli theatre culture. * Freddie Rokem, Theatre Research International *